bluerain

I believe that every season has a scent, that every place
and time has a complement odour. I
remember the first time I came to Manila,
there was this odd trail that resembled that of a concoction of musk, algae,
burning paper, petrol, and pork barbeque as I stepped out of a ferry in one of Manila’s harbours. Just like when I
first came to Dublin.  It smelled of mountain spring, dusty carpet,
mud, sea breeze, Danish pastry, and freshly-cut grass. It’s always a concoction, never a one single odour. Every memory that I have, be it an event,
music, a person, or a book, all seemed to register a particular smell, a scent
that defines each moment, each object or each person. 

In humans, the sense of smell is always considered the least
important among all the senses. Some
people with an affliction that affects the olfactory nerves can even live
without it. Unknowingly though, the
sense of smell contributes to the finer experiences of our being. We are able to taste and make distinctions of
flavours, not because of the power of the tongue, but because the nose
distinguishes them for us. Studies showed that we have about 900 receptor genes
in our genomes, and only about a third is functional. Some mammals have like a thousand functioning
receptor genes. Bloodhounds for example
have a remarkable sense of smell that they can follow a scent trail left several
days in the past.  Still for humans, we
seemed to have outgrown this frail sense, typical of humans; we have become too
sophisticated for such primal instinct that we gradually “out-evolved” it.  

Sometimes we get used to a certain smell, like when we use
an aftershave or a perfume for longer period of time than usual; we sort of get
too familiar with the scent that we couldn’t smell it anymore. We are too accustomed with our bodily smell
that only other people can smell us, and most of the time our smell leaves
lasting impressions. So there go the
pheromones, some innate bodily chemicals that cause intrinsic behavioural
responses on animals of same species, humans included, and thus, the
commercialization of perfumes and signature scents. 

Nowadays I could smell Dublin no more; it has become too familiar, just like Manila’s scent has become too familiar to be recognizable after staying there for almost
a decade. Maybe a few more years of
absence and then maybe the scent will come back to me. Ironically, I have the faintest thought of
what my little hometown of Zamboanga smelled like. Maybe because I was born there that I have
outgrown it too. Maybe when I go back, I
might remember; the way I still remember my father’s scent, or my mother’s
kitchen, or my aunt’s scarf, or the smell of a pond on my way to my granny’s
house. Most often than not, I would long
for that familiar scent. They remind me of the pain I felt in the past, but they
also bring comfort, and they heal; they make me cry yet they make me feel safe; for
these concoction of scents are what made me. Sweet scents, repulsive scents, dreamy scents, like the memories they
hold, and some scents new, that they never go away.

- bluerain